William Couser

This presentation was given by William Couser, Member of ISN’s WKD Steering Committee and Affiliate Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. It was presented at the 4th World Kidney Day Celebration Conference on March 14th, 2014 in Moscow, Russia. The conference was entitled “Chronic kidney disease and the aging population”

As always, most of my free time at ASN Renal Week in San Diego was consumed by ISN Committee meetings. The most rewarding for me were the discussions by the GO Core Committee around selecting recipients of the new ISN Pioneer Awards. The Pioneer Awards are a bit different from the usual awards that go to people who have done the best or most of something.

These awards are designed to honor previously unrecognized, or under-recognized, individuals who have made pioneering contributions to the development of nephrology in their respective countries or regions in the developing world, but who were not visible internationally. Identification of such individuals has required considerable beating of the bushes and input from our regional committees who know their local nephrology pioneers in a way that we as ISN leaders cannot.

Many have been nominated for the awards and one recipient will be selected for each region to be honored at the World Congress of Nephrology (WCN) in Hong Kong. Their stories, as might be anticipated, are quite moving portraits of a generation of dedicated people who often overcame considerable obstacles to make renal care or training available in places where none existed before. The inaugural Pioneer Award recipients will be honored and their stories capsulized on individual posters that will be displayed in a “GO Gallery” at WCN. I know everyone who takes the time to visit the display will find these people and their stories a particularly inspirational part of the overall WCN experience.

Abstract: Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) are the most common causes of premature death and morbidity and have a major impact on health-care costs, productivity, and growth. Cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease have been prioritized in the Global NCD Action Plan endorsed by the World Health Assembly, because they share behavioral risk factors amenable to public-health action and represent a major portion of the global NCD burden.

As I participated again in the ISN GO CME portion of the “Forefronts in Glomerular Disease – Nanjing Forum” meeting in Nanjing on August 25, I could not help being reminded of the first such event. It was called the “International Workshop on Renal Diseases” held at Jinling Hospital and Nanjing University in June 1988.

At that time, several ISN leaders including Robert Schrier from the US, Stuart Cameron from the UK and Priscilla Kincaid-Smith and Robert Atkins from Australia went to Nanjing at the invitation of the late Lei Chi Li, later an ISN Councilor and Honorary Member, who had personally organized the first ever nephrology meeting held in China with international speakers presenting in English. The enormity of that task was brought home the next year when the events in Tiananmen square in Beijing led to cancellation or postponement of follow up renal meetings in China.

But the seeds have been sown, and the Nanjing Forum has been held and supported by ISN almost every year since. The forum is unique among ISN CME events for reasons beyond its historical distinction of being the first ever international nephrology meeting in a modernizing China. It has always presented state-of-the-art renal science. This year it focused on newer aspects of podocyte function and systems biology mixed with clinical presentations and local speakers. The audience of 500-600 Chinese registrants also exceeds that of most CMEs and rivals an ISN Nexus or Forefronts meeting.

The high quality of the Nanjing meeting (now organized by ISN Councillor Zhi-Hong Liu, Director of the Research Institute for Nephrology at Jinling hospital) parallels the incredible growth of China itself over the past 20 years and the accompanying emergence of world class nephrology clinical care and research in Nanjing as well as in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other large cities.

Over 20 years of ISN CME, fellowship and Sister Renal Center support for the Nanjing programs, along with the visionary leadership of individuals like Lei Chi Li and Zhi-Hong Liu, have been essential to making this program the center of excellence it is today. The challenge for the future will be using the Nanjing model to extend these same programs to more rural and much less developed renal centers in China.

Presentation of the Global Outreach programs: aims, deadlines, applications